New Exoplanets Discovered By NASA

posted by Daniel Crumbley -

Jan 9, 2019

NASA says its newest planet-hunting telescope has discovered three new worlds relatively close to Earth. The most recent is a planet around a star about 53 light years away. It's three times the size of Earth, a year is 36 days and the temperature is a balmy 300 degrees. It's likely a gas planet, but denser than the gas giants of our solar system. Two other planets have also been found since July, including what astronomers speculate is likely a lava world 49 light years away, orbiting so fast that a year is just eleven hours. The third planet is 60 light years away and orbits close to its star. The discoveries were made by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, launched last April.